Building a Log Cabin in the Forest with Help From My Dog - Roof, Stone Floor and Woodstove

Description

In this episode, Cali, our Golden Retriever, spends time with me at the cabin as I finish the roof, chink the log cabin, install a woodstove and start a flagstone floor under the fireplace and at the entranceway.

Music by David Mitchell of My Outdoor Adventures (https://www.myoutdooradventures.ca/)

The weather is crazy - from balmy sunny days to rain and snow.The creek starts to freeze, the leaves are almost all off the trees and the bears are very active, getting closer to the cabin in their search for food before denning for the winter. Moose and deer are regular visitors, passing in the night as close as 10 feet from the log cabin.

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Building a Log Cabin in the Forest with Help From My Dog - Roof, Stone Floor and Woodstove

My Self reliance, shawn james, winter camping, Bushcraft, Woodcraft, Survival, Primitive skills, Nature, EDC, Preparedness, Homesteading, Homestead, Camping, Fire, Self Reliance, Self Sufficiency, Living Off The Land, Off The Grid, Survival Kit, Bushcraft Kit, Pathfinder School, Firesteel, Ferro Rod, Carving, Primitive Shelters, Feathersticks, Campfire, Campfire Cooking, Bushcraft Breakfast, Fjallraven, Friction Fire, Dehydrated Meals, Food Storage, Freeze Dried Foods, Wild Edibles, Foraging, Life Hacks, Camping Hacks, Hunting, outdoors

Tags: bushcraft,camping,canoe,self-reliance,survival,log,cabin,Cabin,log cabin,off-grid,self reliance,tiny home,small home,shelter,living off the land,homestead,woodcraft,woodworking,gransfors bruk,axe,pathfinder school,dick proenneke,cabin living,alone in the wilderness,joe Robinet,ontario,canada,building by hand,off grid cabin,small cabin,hygge,one man’s wilderness,amsr,adventure dog,outdoor dog

Video Transcription

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everybody Shawn James here welcome back to the cabin I can't tell if I black on my face I'm finishing up the roof today the top Ridge caps in the west side that wasn't done in the last video and of course handling that charcoal water get covered in it the weather has not been favorable if start off with rain at the beginning of the week and then it turned the snow and actually this wasn't even calling for this today and about more flurries so if you're new to the channel or new your newest subscriber I appreciate you tuning in and and staying with me for the cabin series I'll be doing this every week for eternity hopefully they'll throw some other stuff in the middle of the week different videos on gear and other stuff but this Friday's cabin series is becoming a regular thing and I plan on continue to do that so thanks for tuning in and hope you continue to do so again if you're new you might not know near the end of the video it's up to you whether you want to watch it or not I just talk about whatever's on my mind that day or that week and I call it myself reflections so I'm just getting stuff off my chest and talking and and there I did bit of maybe helpful information that you might be able to use in your life so if you're not really interested in just hearing me talk about life and about my trials and tribulations and you can just skip that part obviously so thanks for watching this guy's I'll see you up here at the cabin next week have a great week [Applause]

pretty quick but I think I'll put some hard maple on this fire get some good hot coals I can just run these things over really quickly [Music]

[Laughter]

are you putting your face in the mud [Applause]

your crazy dog [Applause]

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did your big help there you wrong hey somewhere else

no Kelly no no good your nose yeah they don't you don't want any clay you want to clear well the nice thing about using clades that cement and I've got lots of this clay is that even if that starts to settle got to move around because I think it's going to be I think it is going to move a little bit that I could just lift that tile up and put some more clay under it and then reset it so happen with that this is the finished floor right so I want this stone floor to be flush with that word [Applause]

Julie today been working fairly hard on the roof in the floor 7 what much clothes on but once I stop it it starts to cool down pretty quickly it's gonna have a quick lunch rush some ham and cheese and mustard and some buttons so steel buns

yeah but

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don't settle now it's about 450 pounds apparently but I looked it up online Vermont castings I'm trying to reassemble it here put the legs back on see where the legs sit on the stones and see if I need to move the stones around otherwise I would have just finished the whole floor for cemented event but I know it's gonna shift so I'd like to get the legs on decent sized stones distribute the weight a bit easier said no no missed big beasts my wife found this on that line and Kijiji like four months ago so it's yeah at least four months ago I bought it for $140 built the skin around it and then sled iturra wagon dit in down that trail which was hell and I've been working around it for all that time so now I have to try to remember all the parts that I've got in a little box around here figure out how to put it back together again IKEA without plans not the plans usually hope

lots of rust on but surface for us is sound all the way throughout I didn't find any any weak spots [Applause]

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cold never did get up above freezing today it's like 1 o'clock and I'm just stopping for lunch stepped inside and gonna sitting here beside the stove not very warm but it's better than sitting there in the flurries

I mentioned beginning the video I want to talk a little bit about my shyness when I was younger and my unwillingness or inability to just ask for what I want out of life so 21 years old when my girlfriend of a few years cheated on me actually in that broke up with me bit about tough time but just typical stuff I got everybody goes through but I went two years after that without asking anybody out to on a date I was just too shy and I guess I don't know the pain from that gonna help you back a little bit but I think mainly I was just so shy that just didn't have the confidence to go up to a girl anywhere and ask us to date so fast forward two years so when I was 23 I had come out of the bush at 21 I guess out of the cabin and went to work started at trade with my dad as a friend of sheetmetal worker so I was two years living down in the city with him and then we moved back to my mother's house the two of us when she took him back after he spent a couple years rehabilitating from his alcoholism so there it was back at home and started banking at the local bank near the house that I grew up in and how we said we were now living in again so a 23 him had a couple of rough circumstances so even though I still own that property I was making payments on it I had a car that I had total somebody hit me actually I stopped at a stop sign and foolish me he didn't have insurance on it so I lost the vehicle still owed $10,000 on it I had to sell one of the properties to pay that off and ended up just with the one property with the cabin on it just a long rough period financially so I didn't have a vehicle so here I am getting a ride to work with my dad and our next-door neighbor was also a sheetmetal worker worked at the same company so three of us would go to work down in Toronto and we bank together at the same bank in town and there was a really really good-looking girl behind the counter and I was the head and I would wait in line for her and and that went on for I don't know several months and just very very high level flirting I guess and I just never had the confidence to ask her out it was just way too shy to consider to see if she was interested in me so nothing came of that

until one day rat Rick was my neighbor comes out to the car after I finished before him on the backhoe to his car or his truck and he said you know that girl behind the counter the one with all the rings on her and on her hand so she he was asking about you asked if you had a girlfriend

yeah I was trying to look through the window I to figure out who he was talking about and finally figured out it was the girl that actually liked actually I was attracted to and sure enough he was asking about me and and next time I was in there she was all smiles as I was in the lineup and and so was I ended up finally getting up in front of her and she ended up asking me you asking me to meet her at some bar that night and one thing led to another and three years later we were married but can you imagine if she hadn't asked me we wouldn't be together and my life wouldn't have turned out the way it has you know would have been different at the very least and I wouldn't have these two wonderful daughters that I have 18 and 17 year old daughters just had a very very happy life been married for 23 years and no signs of stopping so imagine me being too shy to ask her out if she hadn't have asked me oh there's no way I was going to would have carried on and who know whoo I would have ended up with or where I would have ended up but what got me thinking about that was not just my shyness and how that held me back but how many other things in my life have I been too shy or uncomfortable or for some other reason it was just afraid to ask you know asking is such a simple thing but most of us have a hard time doing it and and there's so many opportunities so many people that we don't have in our lives so many opportunities that we don't get that we don't take advantage of because we just simply didn't ask the question I can tell you some very specific examples when I was an employer and we had dozens of employees and you know didn't have set wages it wasn't a union shop so we would have pay people different rates tried to be fair about it go to somebody came up and asked me for a raise I usually didn't have the strength regardless of whether I could afford to give them a raise or not to give them the race so they would get it and then of course somebody else would find out then I would have to give them a raise as well so I tried so so hard to be a fair employer but you know what it came down to is the squeaky wheel got the oil now that's just one example so how many times did I not ask for a raise or ask for a different position or asked for that project or that contract that I that I needed when I had my own business so many times I had to force myself to step out of my comfort zone to ask that question but I know that happens to all of us I know how many people have missed opportunities maybe they go through their life single because they were afraid to ask somebody out and somebody they had their eye on or somebody they were interested in that happens all of the time especially when we're younger and more insecure how many people in there you know late teens early 20s meet maybe the person they're meant to be with the for the rest their lives and never ask that question so I think you know I've learned to ask more often but I'm still not so secure that I come out and and ask for whatever I want and of course I'm leaving stuff on the table leaving opportunities unexplored and of course a lot of that is insecurity and fear of rejection right so you're afraid to ask that question because you don't want to hear no so I think probably obviously the reason for that is that we're too insecure to ask because we don't want to hear no we don't we don't want to be rejected nobody wants to be rejected we're all looking for somebody to love us somebody to accept us in validation for what we are and what we do with our lives so it's hard to you know come right out and ask that question and be turned down and that will happen of course you are gonna get turned down I'm gonna get turned down and I'm not going to get everything I asked for neither are you but how many times how many things would we get how many opportunities would we have not missed because we weren't afraid of asking so I think it's a good habit to get into to put yourself out there and ask those questions and and see where that takes you so right now I'm gonna ask you if you haven't so subscribe to the channel if you wouldn't mind doing that that would be great either way I appreciate you sticking around watching this part of the video and that's that's it for this week I look forward to seeing you up here at the cabin next week have a great week take care